How South America Became a Nazi Haven
Nazi collection found in Argentina could offer 'irrefutable proof' of top leaders' escape
Ratlines (World War II aftermath) - Wikipedia
Argentine Connection
In Nuremberg at that time something was taking place that I personally considered a disgrace and an unfortunate lesson for the future of humanity. I became certain that the Argentine people also considered the Nuremberg process a disgrace, unworthy of the victors, who behaved as if they hadn't been victorious. Now we realize that they [the Allies] deserved to lose the war. (
Argentine president
Juan Perón on the
Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals.)
[22]
In his 2002 book,
The Real Odessa,
[22] Argentine researcher
Uki Goñi used new access to the country's archives to show that Argentine diplomats and intelligence officers had, on Perón's instructions, vigorously encouraged Nazi and Fascist war criminals to make their home in Argentina. According to Goñi, the Argentines not only collaborated with Draganović's ratline, they set up further ratlines of their own running through
Scandinavia,
Switzerland and
Belgium.
According to Goñi, Argentina's first move into Nazi smuggling was in January 1946, when Argentine bishop
Antonio Caggiano, leader of the Argentine chapter of
Catholic Action flew with another bishop, Agustín Barrére, to Rome where Caggiano was due to be anointed Cardinal. In Rome the Argentine bishops met with French Cardinal
Eugène Tisserant, where they passed on a message (recorded in Argentina's diplomatic archives) that "the Government of the Argentine Republic was willing to receive French persons, whose
political attitude during the recent war would expose them, should they return to France, to harsh measures and private revenge".[
citation needed]
Over the spring of 1946, a number of French war criminals,
fascists and
Vichy officials made it from Italy to Argentina in the same way: they were issued passports by the Rome
ICRC office; these were then stamped with Argentine tourist visas (the need for health certificates and return tickets was waived on Caggiano's recommendation). The first documented case of a French war criminal arriving in Buenos Aires was
Émile Dewoitine — later sentenced in absentia to 20 years hard labour. He sailed first class on the same ship back with Cardinal Caggiano.
[23]
Shortly after this Argentinian Nazi smuggling became institutionalised, according to Goñi, when Perón's new government of February 1946 appointed
anthropologist Santiago Peralta as Immigration Commissioner and former
Ribbentrop agent Ludwig Freude as his intelligence chief. Goñi argues that these two then set up a "rescue team" of secret service agents and immigration "advisors", many of whom were themselves European war-criminals, with Argentine
citizenship and employment.
[24]
In 2014, 700 declassified FBI documents revealed that the US government had undertaken an investigation in 1947 as to the possible escape of Adolf Hitler from Germany where it was purported that he had not committed suicide in Berlin as reported but had fled Berlin in 1945 and had eventually arrived in Argentina via Spain.
[25][26] Within the pages of these documents are thousands of statements, naming people and places involved in Hitler's alleged journey from Germany to Argentina including mention of the ratlines that were already in existence. These FBI documents are available for public viewing on the FBI website.
[27]
ODESSA and the Gehlen Org
The Italian and Argentine ratlines have only been confirmed relatively recently, mainly due to research in newly declassified archives. Until the work of Aarons and Loftus, and of
Uki Goñi (2002), a common view was that ex-Nazis themselves, organised in secret networks, ran the escape routes alone. The most famous such network is ODESSA (Organisation of former SS members), founded in 1946 according to
Simon Wiesenthal, which included
SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny and
Sturmbannführer Alfred Naujocks and, in Argentina,
Rodolfo Freude.
Alois Brunner, former commandant of
Drancy internment camp near Paris, escaped to Rome, then
Syria, by ODESSA. (Brunner was thought to be the highest-ranking Nazi war criminal still alive as of 2007.)
Persons claiming to represent ODESSA claimed responsibility for the unsuccessful July 9, 1979, car bombing in France aimed at
Nazi hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld.[
citation needed] According to
Paul Manning (1980), "eventually, over 10,000 former German military made it to South America along escape routes ODESSA and Deutsche Hilfsverein ..."
[28]
Simon Wiesenthal, who advised
Frederick Forsyth on the novel/filmscript
The Odessa File which brought the name to public attention, also names other Nazi escape organisations such as
Spinne ("Spider") and
Sechsgestirn ("Constellation of Six"). Wiesenthal describes these immediately after the war as Nazi cells based in areas of Austria where many Nazis had retreated and
gone to ground. Wiesenthal claimed that the ODESSA network shepherded escapees to the Catholic ratlines in Rome (although he mentions only Hudal, not Draganović); or through a second route through France and into
Francoist Spain.
[29]
ODESSA was supported by the
Gehlen Organization, which employed many former Nazi party members, and was headed by
Reinhard Gehlen, a former German Army intelligence officer employed post-war by the
CIA. The Gehlen Organization became the nucleus of the
BND German intelligence agency, directed by Reinhard Gehlen from its 1956 creation until 1968.[
citation needed]
Behind a secret door in Argentina, a huge Nazi trove with apparent connections to Hitler
